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Tuesday, February 7, 2017

Missouri passes Right to Work law as union leaders cozy up to Trump

Union leaders and Trump. And a good time was had by all

Richard
Mellor

Afscme
Local 444 retired

So
Missouri has become the 28th state to introduce right-to-work
legislation. In the last four years, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and West
Virginia have become right-to-work states. What this means in Missouri is that
workers can now decide they don’t want to pay union dues at union workplaces. This
will further undermine organized labor’s power and ability to defend members’
interests. The war against unions will continue faster as these organizations
are starved of resources.

Right-to-Work is a setback, but whose fault is it?
Workers don’t join unions and pay dues as an exercise in civics, out of some
moral obligation to do so. Workers built unions in order to advance our material
well-being. Before unions were legal, if workers were caught discussing coming
together to increase our wages, we were accused under conspiracy laws. We could
be tried and punished, and of course, as jury qualifications limited members to
people of property, the same people controlling our work-lives sat on the jury.

When
we have a situation when our wages and conditions on the job continue to
decline as our union dues continue to rise, this is not encouraging. Why pay
dues under these conditions? When you go down to the union hall or you are
forced on strike and your officials tell you that concessions are the only
option; why pay dues to an organization like that? Why even belong to it? When
your top officials earn five or maybe ten times the average members’ salary why
should that bring loyalty?

The
heads of organized labor have cooperated for decades in undermining our wages
and working conditions. There was a time when they at least pretended to fight.
Today, they have openly joined the camp of those whose goal it is to take back
all the gains won over 150 years.

The
leadership of the AFL-CIO, a national organization of unions with 14 million
members , has nothing to say about this aggressive war against American workers
by the American capitalist class. Well not quite nothing.Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO president wrote a
couple lines on the right-to-work legislation last week.He pointed out that, “A recent Pew survey shows that 60% of Americans—an overwhelming
majority—support unions.”

I am
sure that’s probably correct. So how come we are in decline? We are in decline yes
because of the aggressive war against union from the employers and the state,
but also because the same 60% abhor people like Trumka. The bosses are not
afraid of them and the average union member and millions of unorganized
workers, few of which would have ever heard of him, wouldn’t be able to distinguish
between a union official and the boss so similar are they in their view of the
world.

Strike
after strike has been defeated through a powerful combination of the bosses and
the trade union officialdom.In some
cases like Boeing a few years ago, contracts in auto and SEIU here in San
Francisco and other areas, union officials have forced concessionary contracts
on their members after they rejected them. Members see that that officials
don’t have to work under the contracts they force down their throats.

Then
there is the blatant collaboration that gets exposed periodically like Rome
Aloise of Teamsters Local 70 in the Bay Area brought up on charges for “requesting and receiving things of value
from IBT employers..”and among
other things “entering in to sham
collective bargaining agreements with the GrandFund” and interfering in
union elections. Aloise made $346,722 in salaries and allowances in 2014
according to the Teamster for a Democratic
Union that’s
beside all the other perks like double pensions.

I
was on a picket line at a waste management complex where I live as sorters, the
lowest paid workers, went on strike for higher wages. Most of these workers
were immigrants and members of the ILWU warehouse division. Using
organizational violations as an excuse, the higher paid truck drivers, also
unionized in the Teamsters union, were escorted across picket lines by teamster
staffers and officials. I could see that the rank and file drivers didn’t like
it, they knew better, but the army of staff the unions employ can make life
difficult for recalcitrant members if they choose to.In some instances, the union officials collaborate
with the employers to terminate members that won’t cooperate with the
concessionary program.

But
outside of this there is the complete failure and refusal of the labor
hierarchy to put up any fight at all.There are 14 million workers in unions but this power is kept dormant,
slumbering in the lap of a bankrupt bureaucratic clique that has control of the
apparatus.

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that right-to-work is advancing, “despite strong opposition by unions.” But that “strong
opposition” is limited to electoral activity, appealing to “friendly” bosses and politicians in the
Capitalist Democratic Party or the capitalist courts to protect them.

Losing funds is a major concern for the officialdom and why in
the Wisconsin events of few years ago with some 100,000 workers in the streets
and occupying public buildings, the only two demands of any consequence for the
heads of organized labor were dues check off where the boss collects the
revenue for them through payroll, and collective bargaining rights without
which the officials would have no job at all. Democrats supported them mildly
as cutting dues income reduces the amount of union money they can get their
hands on at election time. It matters less and less to the rank and file member
as their wages go down and their conditions at work deteriorate as dues union go
up.

Strategy with strikes is pathetic and childish. In fact, strikes
are not strikes at all today but 24 hour ineffective protests. Workers are left
sitting at factory gates or sidewalk camps eating donuts, drinking coffee as
scabs, accompanied by cops (and sometimes officials of other unions) enter
struck plants freely. In the refinery strike last year, the union could have
struck all 65 plants but struck only nine so as not to disrupt production.

In a restaurant strike a few years ago in San Francisco,
tape was placed on the sidewalk that kept the strikers from impeding scabs that
entered freely. The union leadership, the cops and the employer had “an agreement”. So basically workers
were out of work, losing money and spending their days picketing a brick wall.

Then, common with the building trades, machinists and some
others is the inflated rat. How many of us have driven past ineffective picket
lines, donuts and all, and there is the big inflatable rat. That really hurts
the boss doesn’t it. If some crafty worker had only come up with the inflatable
rat idea in the 1880’s through the 1930’s we could have avoided all that
violence, workers shot, deported, beaten, kicked out of their homes, all for
nothing; the inflatable rat would have brought the bosses to their knees. Too
late now; their not frightened of it any more.

There’s
just too many failures, too many betrayals to mention. Concessionary contracts
that are signed that screw the new hires, strikes that go on endlessly with
nothing to show for it. And to top it all off, we have leaders of the building
trades meeting with the degenerate Trump, laughing, praising him as Teamster
head Hoffa has. In a California report on KNPR this morning union officials
were interviewed about the future and it was less than inspiring. One of them
did mention mobilizing and getting in the streets but that alone is not enough.
“Wear Red on Friday” was one of the
themes of a protest against layoffs that I went to once. That’s worse than the
rat.

The
bosses will only respond if we mobilize in our workplaces and out communities
to shut down production, to halt business as usual. This is all they listen to.
But the union leaders are wedded to the Team Concept, they worship the market
as the answer to all things and cannot see an alternative to capitalism.
Mobilizing the immense power of their members and the working class as a whole
can only lead to chaos, and besides, their privileged positions will be
threatened.

The
labor hierarchy’s response to the capitalist offensive and the rise of Trump
(which is their own doing) is cowardly and pitiful. Meeting with the predator
in chief is disgusting and does further harm to the labor movement, scabbing on
the movement. How must women, immigrants, people of color and the Transgender
feel about that? The living standards of white workers has declined, Trump will
not correct that and by dividing us ensures it will not be corrected. The
entire union leadership should work against this man (and his class) not with
him, organized labor can draw all in to its ranks and that must be our goal.

I
have read some who say we have to just pull out and start new unions and such
escapism. But that guarantees nothing. We have an obligation to fight to remove
the present pro-business clique atop organized labor. We must build oppositions
on the ground, in the workplaces, in our communities.We must reject the Team Concept, the view
that employers and workers, capitalists and workers, have the same economic
interests. We must demand what we need to live a decent life in harmony with
nature. We must step up and stop this madness. It is one thing if there is a
mass split from the traditional organizations but to advocate leaving without a
fight is a mistake.

We
are in a new period. Millions of people have been energized by Trumpism. There
are a whole host of groups, Internet organizations, campaigns, that are going
on throughout the country and union members must work to help draw these
struggles together in to one mass united working class alliance or front and
direct action, stopping business as usual must be our tactic. The bosses must
fear us, and they only get scared when the profits stop coming in.

Scabby the Rat. Plant him outside union headquarters.

Those
of us around Facts For Working People have ben discussing these issues and how
to move forward in this new situation. Our resources are small, but we have
ideas, tradition and history in unions and community struggles and want to
participate in the battles ahead.As
union members who want to fight back, we can start with a protest of our own at
the AFL-CIO headquarters. Let’s take the inflatable rat there. We can have more
than one rat. We can take numerous inflatable rats and have mass protests at
the headquarters of the unions whose officials met with Trump. We should seek
an alliance with others fighting back and invite them to join us.

It
took heroic struggle to build our unions with all their weaknesses, racism,
craft snobbery, sexism, but we should not abandon them without a fight. Despite
the low unionization rate they are still organizations of the working class as
a whole, as the entire working class benefits from their existence. The present
leadership has lost their right to lead. They are agents of our enemies within
our organizations and we have to remove them.

I am
sure there are new leaders who want to change direction but if that is so they
must not remain quiet, they must speak up and they must reject the failed
policies that have brought unions to the edge of extinction. Unity between
leaders at all costs must cease. They must reject concessions, the Team Concept
and the deathly embrace with the Democratic Party. They must reject the
murderous US foreign policy that threatens us all with nuclear war or
environmental catastrophe and embrace instead internationalism and solidarity
if they want to play a role in re-building organized labor.

Leadership
has responsibilities, but so does being a member. We must lead from below.